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Laws and Principles Quiz

All the questions in this quiz are about laws, principles and adages!

Questions

  1. Whose law is an adage that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong"?
  2. What name is given to the principle that, of two explanations that account for all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be correct?
  3. Whose law states that the tension on a spring or other elastic object is proportional to the displacement from the equilibrium?
  4. The Peter principle states that "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of" what?
  5. Complete the adage: "Don't hide your light under a ...."?
  6. Whose laws of planetary motion describe the motion of the planets around the sun?




  7. Godwin’s Law is the principle that the longer an online Internet discussion goes on, the more likely it becomes that someone will make a comparison to who or what?
  8. In physics, how many laws of motion did Newton define concerning the behaviour of moving bodies?
  9. Which poet wrote: "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"?
  10. Whose law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points?
  11. Whose law states that "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion"?
  12. Whose law is the simple formula used to calculate the refraction of light when travelling between two media of differing refractive index?
  13. Which law states that if something can go wrong, it will?
  14. Whose principle indicates that the upward buoyant force that is exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces?
  15. In economics, whose law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good"?
  16. Can you finish Acton's dictum: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts ...."?
  17. In Aesop's Fables, appearances often are what?
  18. In whose Three Laws of Robotics is it stated that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm?
  19. In the bible, in Jeremiah 13:23, what cannot change his spots?
  20. Cunningham’s Law states that the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to post a question – but to post what?
  21. Which science fiction writer coined the law: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"?
  22. What makes the heart grow fonder?
  23. Can you add the last word to Sturgeon’s Law: "90% of everything is ..."?
  24. Can you complete the Henry Ford quote about the Model T car: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it is ...."?



Answers:

  1. Murphy's law
  2. Occam's razor
  3. Hooke's law
  4. Incompetence
  5. Bushel
  6. Kepler's laws of planetary motion
  7. Hitler or Nazis
  8. Three
  9. Alfred Lord Tennyson ("In Memoriam")
  10. Ohm's law
  11. Parkinson's law
  12. Snell's law
  13. Sod's law
  14. Archimedes' principle
  15. Gresham's law
  16. Absolutely
  17. Deceiving
  18. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
  19. A leopard



  20. The wrong answer
  21. Arthur C. Clarke
  22. Absence
  23. Crud
  24. Black